


Out There (If I Reach Out)

by agentverbivore (verbivore8642)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), WALL-E (2008)
Genre: Adorable FitzSimmons (Agents of SHIELD), Alternate Universe, F/M, Fairytale elements in a sci fi setting, Fitz's POV, Fluff, Friend Fluff, Leo & WALL-E is my new BrOTP, Romantic Fluff, WALL-E (2008) References, WALL-E AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 23:40:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2044566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbivore8642/pseuds/agentverbivore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leo Fitz is the last human on Earth, having been assigned the job of caring for the robot fleet left to clean up the planet and search for new life. He spends his days with his robot best friend, WALL-E, always waiting - until a robot handler named Jemma Simmons arrives and everything changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out There (If I Reach Out)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a modified version of the world from WALL-E, the key changes being that humanity is keeping watch over the planet and that people aren't giant blobs of fat. 
> 
> Thanks again to MC MK for editing & assuring me that this wasn't quite as weird as I'd initially feared!

Two days from now would be the eighth anniversary of Fitz’s assignment to Earth, and he was trying to figure out the best way to celebrate it. Or if he should celebrate the day at all, really, since eight was a non-committal year at best. As he proceeded alongside a towering pyramid of compacted trash cubes, he squinted up at the sky through the visor of his protective suit’s helmet and sighed. Although he knew it was late afternoon, and just about time for him to return home, the sky was the same as it always was in daylight – a marbled sand-brown, marred by the occasional floating plastic bag. Nearing a decade of the same sky, and yet it didn’t feel much different to him than the stark white ceilings he’d left behind on the spaceship.

A familiar whirring approached from behind Fitz, and he turned back to look at the square, thigh-high robot speeding to catch up to him. When Fitz had first arrived on Earth, in addition to the robots assigned to a variety of tasks around the planet, he’d been introduced to a fleet of standard-issue trash compactor robots known as _Wall-E’s_. They were differentiated by an ascending order of serial numbers and all looked identical: Square, yellow body, goggle-shaped eyes, rotating-track wheels, and three-fingered, claw-like hands. It was a surprisingly cute design, considering that their purpose was to condense the refuse left on a decaying planet, but then again Fitz’s grandparents hadn’t even been born when they were invented so he’d certainly not had anything to do with it. He’d tried submitting redesigns, but was unceremoniously shot down because of his age. (At least, that’s what they intimated – he suspected it was because they didn’t want to bother with the expense.)

Initially, Fitz had just made necessary tweaks to the robots to improve their day-to-day functionality – a motor optimization there, an optics adjustment here – but after a few months Fitz, to his surprise, began to feel quite lonely. He’d been something of a loner up on the spaceship, which is why he’d volunteered at the tender age of seventeen to take the place of the then-current Earth-robot supervising engineer. Most engineers didn’t last for more than a couple years; being alone on a desolate, polluted planet tended to wreck havoc on most psyches. Fitz had reasoned since he didn’t have anyone to talk to up on the spaceship (or even in the whole of humanity’s space armada, for that matter), Earth wouldn’t be so different. For the first time in his fairly short life, he’d been wrong. Not speaking to the people around one is really quite different from being the only living being on an entire planet.

One day, about three months after he’d been dropped off at the engineer living quarters (which were really more of a bare-bones tornado shelter, not that he had anyone to complain to), he noticed that one of the compactor robots was behaving differently than the others. Where most of the robots followed the same path every day, this little fellow had started making patterns using his track-wheels and using his trash blocks to make a rather amusing self-portrait. As Fitz watched the robot gently slot in the final block of his sculpture, he cleared his throat, causing the robot to jump into the air and then hang his head, clearly expecting to be scolded. 

“Not a bad likeness,” Fitz had said, grinning, his voice filtered through the clear, malleable polymer mask of his suit. “But you made your eyes rather disproportionate to your wheels. Better perspective next time, yeah?” The small robot’s pupils had widened, and then he’d clicked his gears in agreement. From that day on, all the other robots were Unit 758 and so on, and this little guy became Wall-E. Fitz wasn’t sure what in this robot’s mechanics allowed him to display a distinct personality, but it seemed wrong, somehow, for him to take apart his new friend as if he was any one of the other robots with whom he hadn’t been building a friendship. So he’d just buried his curiosity underneath his relief and continued on as if Wall-E had been designed that way.

While Fitz was busy pondering his luck in actually finding a friend all those years ago – even one that wasn’t human – Wall-E came scurrying up in front of him and then stopped short. Fitz stumbled over his own feet to stop himself in time, and swore as he picked up his control tablet from the dust. “C’mon mate, I’ve told you not to do that!”

The robot continued chirping at him and held out one of his hands, showing no remorse over his own exuberance. Fitz plucked the object from Wall-E’s hand and his mouth dropped open. “I cannot believe this. I thought we’d found all –” A strong gust of wind shoved him a couple steps forward, and he turned to see a storm brewing in the distance, a thick cloud of dust creeping through ruined skyscrapers. “Alright, work day’s over early, then. Let’s go.” Fitz started jogging back to the shelter with Wall-E following mostly closely behind, zipping off periodically to look at some piece of scrap and potential treasure or the other before returning.

The rest of the robot fleet obeyed Fitz’s quickly-keyed in instructions to cease working and hunker in place until the storm passed, which he confirmed as he sped past a few that had been mid-compaction. Fitz wrenched open the outer hatch and turned to usher Wall-E inside with a muttered “Go on, go on then.” The robot rolled blithely past him, clutching a bedraggled old boot. Fitz dragged the safety hatch closed, snapping shut its various bolts, locks, and cables before switching on the anteroom’s single lightbulb and stripping off his suit. The air outside was no longer toxic, according to his instruments, but certainly not breathable for any sustained period of time.

He took a moment to brush an appalling cloud of dust off his clothes before pulling open the door to his living quarters. No matter how well he sealed the suit, he always found himself covered in dirt from head to toe. If he had anyone to worry about impressing, he’d be appalled – but then again, that was one of the few advantages of being the only living person on a planet.

As Fitz shut the bolts on the secondary door, Wall-E was already puttering about, sorting the new pieces of memorabilia that he’d collected that day. The living quarters were small – one medium-sized, windowless room with a fold-out kitchenette and connected bathroom – and cramped, each wall covered from floor to ceiling in rotating shelves that Fitz had built his first year on Earth. He and Wall-E shared the shelving space to keep the various things they collected from the scrap heaps, hoarding the memories of ages long past like unconventional magpies.

Something hard and plastic dug into his thigh, and Fitz remembered why he’d been so eager to return home in the first place, aside from getting out of harm’s way. “Hey, c’mere.”

The robot held up a hand to signal that Fitz should wait, stopped the rotating shelf, gently placed the boot alongside a collection of miscellaneous scraps, and then rolled over to him. They had a brief battle – Wall-E’s speakers were better than the rusting boom box Fitz had fixed up, but the robot seemed to object to being used for his cassette deck – and Fitz won. A distinct frown around his eyes, Wall-E rewound the tape he’d found, popped it into his chest, and pressed play. Slowly, Fitz began to smile as the overture played, his eyes unfocused somewhere on the shelter’s grime-covered wall.

Musicals had never appealed much to Fitz when he was younger, back on the spaceship; his mother listened to too many modern ones that insisted on campy beats, and he’d grown weary of them. After about a month of their friendship down on Earth, Wall-E had brought Fitz something that was a curiosity – a cassette tape. Since this was before he’d found and repaired the boom box (or even their dented, boxy television with a built-in VHS player), Fitz set about figuring out how to play the antiquated thing. With a little bit of tinkering, he’d managed to install an orphaned tape deck and speakers into the robot’s chest cavity. When they’d both heard the first strains of “ _out there, there’s a world outside of Yonkers_ ” crooning through the tinny speakers, they’d looked at each other, needing no words to know that this tape was something special.

In their daily work, they’d started collecting all manner of tapes, both video and audio – optical discs hadn’t weathered the apocalypse quite as well, for some reason, so they stopped trying those after only a couple months. No matter what they found, Wall-E never loved anything more than that first tape of _Hello Dolly!_ , preferring to listen to it for hours on end as he worked (or watch it during the dust storms, once he found a VHS). Although Fitz liked that one, it just couldn’t come close to his favorite musical, which he’d discovered almost two years later.

He swiped a thin layer of dust off the back of the case with his thumb, reading the names of the familiar song list with new cast names attached, still shocked that after all this time Wall-E had found him a new stage recording of _Man of La Mancha_. It wasn’t one of the most popular musicals, according to the database he’d managed to scour the last time he’d been debriefed on the spaceship, but he’d never understood why not.

“ _I have dreamed thee too long / never seen thee or touched thee / but known thee with all of my heart…_ ” The tape skipped on the last word but kept playing when Wall-E gave his chest a quick thump. “Dulcinea” wasn’t Fitz’s favorite song – that honor had to go to “The Impossible Dream,” which wasn’t until later in the show – but it came close. The show’s themes, of dreaming, courage, selfless love, and dedication to doing something worthwhile even if no one else believed in you, spoke to Fitz on a level that took him years to parse out, thinking out loud at length in the dark of the shelter to a robot who could only reply in trills, clinks, and facial expressions. Was he just doing his own version of “tilting at windmills” down here on Earth, hoping that one day his search for renewed life would be fulfilled, and did the realization of the quest matter as much as the attempt? Would he ever find his own Aldonza? He held out hope for the former but not the latter – humans, after all, had never really been his thing. 

As the tape faded into the following song, he heard a strange noise come from outside, something like brakes or a motor. He reached out to punch the stop button on Wall-E’s chest but missed, instead hitting the rewind. Wall-E caught on though, and stopped it himself, straining to hear what had caught Fitz’s attention. There couldn’t be something moving outside, because he had shut down all of the robots in anticipation of the dust storm.

Fitz strode to the entrance and turned on the bunker’s outside camera feed. Wall-E squeaked from somewhere behind him, and he realized his mouth had dropped open unbidden: Someone in a brand new spacesuit was getting off a moped-esque shuttle, followed by a egg-shaped robot that was similarly shiny and white. The wind whirled viciously as the person struggled to chain their spaceped to one of the bunker’s shuttle docks, and Fitz leapt over to his main control panel and frantically keyed in the code to resurrect the shelter’s electronic shield. It was too much of an energy hog to keep on all the time, but desperate times called for desperate measures. When the robot and what was presumably a human stepped within the forcefield’s boundaries, Fitz slammed hard on the command button, and let out a sigh of relief as the thin blue layer snapped protectively around his surprise visitors. 

“Who the hell could that be? What d’you reckon?” Fitz said to his friend as he undid the shelter’s inner bolts. Wall-E whistled back apprehensively, and Fitz chuckled. “Can’t be worse than Mum’s visit two years ago, when she tried cleaning your gears.” He tugged the door open, and the robot grumbled at him as he wheeled past.

Fitz waited for the air system to finish filtering out the putrid dust and replacing it with breathable air before starting to disengage the volley of locks and bolts that kept the door shut during the storms. The door released, and there, stark against the storm winds on the other side of the forcefield, stood the person in the spacesuit, the mask’s dark opacity making the figure seem more inhuman than the curious robot currently cowering behind Fitz. 

The person took in that Fitz wasn’t wearing a mask and unscrewed their helmet, a large swath of brown hair tumbling out and around the suit’s shoulders. Inside the suit was a young woman, most likely around his age, and the warmth of her smile caught him completely off guard. “Oh yes, that’s much better,” she sighed, swiping away a few sweaty strands curled over her cheek. “This blasted thing has terrible air circulation, it’s like a sauna!” The egg-shaped robot floated up behind her, two electronic blue eyes taking in the inner contents of the shelter as if to determine its safety.

The woman focused her gaze on Fitz’s face and he swallowed, desperately trying to remember anything he’d learned about girls back when he was living on the spaceship. (The answer that came to him, unfortunately, was “ _not much_ ,” and this one was far prettier than any he’d ever seen back then.)

“Hello!” She pulled off the gloves of her suit and extended her arm. “I’m Jemma Simmons. You must be Leopold Fitz.”

Fitz realized that he’d stared down at her hand for a few seconds too long, but quickly made up for the lag in brain processing by giving her hand a firm shake. “It’s Fitz, actually,” he clarified, blinking at the sudden deepening of his own voice and the thickening of his accent. “No one ever called me by my first name.”

“Oh,” she exclaimed, “you’re from Scotship! Not – not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, the briefing materials just didn’t mention it. I suppose it’s irrelevant really, though, so why would it...” Simmons trailed off and gave an awkward giggle.

Fitz, unused to dealing with people let alone uncomfortable situations, just stood there, lips turned up in a slight smile, worrying the back of his elbow with one hand.

She noted his discomfort and her eyes widened. “Oh, I’m sorry, I should explain the visit, shouldn’t I?”

“Maybe, yeah,” he chuckled. “Can’t say many people stop by on vacation.”

Simmons laughed, and he tried not to start in surprise. “We just finished this month’s sweep for new life. I’m due to rendezvous with the others at the transport ship, but I thought I’d stop by and say hello. As you said, I thought you probably didn’t get many visitors.”

“Ah... no. Don’t think anyone’s ever just come by for a visit before, actually.”

“Really? No one?”

“Not much to see.”

She chuckled again, and glanced behind her at the still-roiling storm. “I seem to have come at rather a bad time... how long do these things tend to last?” 

“Hard to say – sometimes for an hour, others last for days. I really don’t fancy those,” he said darkly. “This planet isn’t much to look at when you can walk outside, let alone being stuck in a tin box.”

She frowned out at the darkening clouds of dust. “It’s also going to be dark soon, and we’re really not supposed to fly the spacepeds without daylight....” A sigh, and then she turned back to him. “Would you mind terribly if I spent the night here? They should have enough supplies to wait for me until it’s light, and hopefully the storm will be gone by then.”

Fitz swallowed again, and, ignoring the fact that Wall-E was poking him painfully in the shin, smiled. “Course you can – better than flying that... contraption when it isn’t safe.”

Simmons gave him a grateful nod in return, and took a few steps towards the edge of the forcefield, speaking into the communicator at her wrist. Fitz whipped his head down to glare at Wall-E, whose eyes were tilted up in blatant excitement. “What has gotten into you, you electronic little monster?” Wall-E just pointed slowly at the smooth, glass-encased robot that was hovering near Simmons, listening to her conversation with command. “They’ve been here for all of five minutes and you have a _crush_ on the bloody search-and-destroy robot?” Wall-E’s eyes widened in abject horror and he fluttered his hands frantically at his trash compactor compartment. “No, not –” Fitz pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “Not _literally_ crush, it’s – it’s a turn of phrase, never mind.” Just then, Simmons turned back around and he quickly snapped his face back into a neutral smile.

“They agreed with our course of action. I’m supposed to get in touch with them after sunrise, and we’ll evaluate the weather conditions then.”

“Ah, good.”

Wall-E had been sneaking closer to the other robot, peering at her seemingly unconnected limbs and head module, and he jumped back when the robot turned its head towards him.

Simmons saw this and laughed. “Shall I make the introductions, then?” She bent over to get down to Wall-E’s level. “This is Eve,” she said, and turned her head up towards Fitz. “It stands for –”

“Extra-terrestrial Vegetation Evaluator, I know. I helped design their new class of motors, back before I left.”

“But didn’t you leave...”

“Eight years ago, yeah. I’d imagine they haven’t changed much since then.” He gave her a thin smile, wondering if he sounded too arrogant but unsure of how to soften facts. “That’s –”

“Wwwwaaaaaaall-Eeee,” squeezed out the robot, and Fitz’s jaw dropped open. Wall-E tentatively reached his hand out towards Eve’s arm, which she jerked backwards.

“He’s not dangerous, Eve,” Simmons scolded softly. 

Eve gazed skeptically down at the other robot, but separated her finger joints and let Wall-E give her hand a tremulous shake. Simmons grinned and stood back up, reaching behind her to unzip her suit. “Do you have somewhere I could hang this? It’s really quite uncomfortable for walking around...” 

Fitz nodded and gestured for her to follow him into the antechamber. As she stripped off the bulky protective suit, she continued talking, almost unaware of his silence. “I’m not actually even supposed to have come down here, but my friend in robot ops wasn’t feeling well so I said I’d take her shift for the day. I took an elective in robotics back in secondary, and she said this wasn’t a challenging shift because there’s never any sign of new growth, so I thought why not? How could I pass up a chance to see the world we left behind?” She was dressed in the ops-standard slacks, but had a pink blouse on underneath a protective overshirt, the kind of personal touch with which most ops employees wouldn’t have bothered.

When Fitz realized she was looking at him again, he quickly returned his attention to her face. “You took a robotics elective in secondary?”

Before he could wonder if that was the kind of thing he should have said back, she laughed and spots of pink appeared on her cheeks. “Yes, I’m – well, I’m not sure how to say it other than that I’m really much smarter than most others my age. I’m the first person ever assigned to the Engship biochem lab before I turned twenty.” Simmons ducked her head and her blush deepened. “Actually – okay, please don’t be embarrassed, but you’re the only other person who’s ever been hired by the armada’s science division in their teens. You’re quite famous for it, and I, well, I thought if I was going to be down here anyway, this would be a chance to meet you. See what you were like.”

Fitz was sure his ears were bright red, and he was wearing a rough spot on his left palm with his thumb. “To see if _we’re_ alike.” 

“Exactly.” She smiled brightly, trying to disguise her nervousness. A small crash from outside echoed into the antechamber, and Eve came soaring into the room, blue eye-lights set into dissatisfied slits.

Fitz cringed at what was surely the sound of Wall-E trying to right himself again outside and sighed.

“Oh my God, is this your outersuit?” 

He turned to see Simmons holding out an arm of his discolored, orange protective suit as if it was diseased. “Yeah, that’s it.”

“They should have sent you new equipment years ago, look at this –” She lifted up the malleable, clear helmet and shook her head, inspecting the sealing.

“It’s fine, honestly –”

“The suit is clearly leaking, though, you could be poisoned or suffocate –”

“Actually, the chemical levels had settled before I even got down here –”

“What? Really?”

“Yeah. No one had tested them in a long time, I think, but I fixed the sensor in the shelter my first week. It’s not toxic outside anymore, just very dusty. And, well, unpleasant.”

She pursed her lips. “Still. You’re doing a very important job, and you deserve new equipment. I’m going to put in a request when I do my debrief.” 

Just as he opened his mouth to tell her not to bother, Wall-E rolled into the room, one optic socket dangling precariously from a fraying wire. “Oh for Pete’s... what did you do to yourself, you silly robot?” Fitz chided, reaching over to gently unscrew the now useless part. “Hang on a mo’,” he directed at Simmons and strode into the other room to hunt down his pile of replacement Wall-E parts.

When Fitz returned with a functional optic piece, Simmons was holding one hand over her mouth to cover her own laughter as she watched Wall-E try to hand Eve a “bouquet” made of spare robot parts. Eve was just watching him with exasperation, finally yanking the bouquet out of his hands and placing it up on a shelf that Wall-E couldn’t reach. The undeterred robot let Fitz screw in his new eye before turning back to Eve. 

Fitz gave Simmons a helpless look and she lowered her hand, revealing her grin. “Seems like someone’s got an admirer.”

They watched Wall-E perform a silly little dance, using an old Frisbee as a hat, and Fitz shook his head. “He’s a right little sap.”

“I think it’s sweet,” she argued. “He must not get to meet many different robots, down here.” 

“Doesn’t mean he needs to lose his head at the very sight of one,” Fitz grumbled, and then coughed, trying to convince himself that they couldn’t possibly be talking about him. He turned to the outer door, considering pulling it shut and turning off the forcefield, but the view outside stopped him. “Come take a look at this,” he said, gesturing for Simmons to follow him out the front door. 

There was a lull in the storm, so the dust layer was thin enough that they could see across the wasteland to the horizon. A wave of deep fuchsia had flushed over the sky’s low clouds, fanning out from the bright orange ember that was the sun. Fitz glanced over to Simmons, who stood less than a foot from his right side, lips half-parted in wonder and eyes dancing with the pink sunlight and the occasional blue flicker from the protective field. His hand brushed accidentally against her palm, and he carefully subdued the instinct to curl his fingers into hers.

“We may not have much, here on Earth, but we do have spectacular sunsets,” he joked quietly.

Simmons made an almost-unconscious murmur of agreement, and then blinked herself out of her daze. “It’s – it’s because of the pollution, you know. The chemicals –”

“I know,” he answered, grinning, but before he could say anything else, music blared suddenly from somewhere behind them, making them both jump.

“ _I see heaven when I see thee, Dulcinea –_ ”

Wall-E, a hand stretched out towards Eve, was frowning down at his chest, having evidently not remembered what he and Fitz had been listening to before their impromptu surprise.

“Turn it off, turn the bloody thing off –” Fitz leapt at him, and the robot scurried in the other direction, swatting away Fitz’s hands as the now-wholly-embarrassing song played on.

“ _Thou art warm and alive, and no phantom to fade in the air..._ ”

Finally, Fitz was able to slam his hand down on the stop button. Wall-E huffed and scooted to the side, brushing himself off as if his friend’s panic had somehow compromised his appearance.

Fitz straightened, panting slightly, and raked his hand through his short, curly hair. “Erm, sorry about that.”

Simmons was staring at him, arms crossed loosely over her abdomen and amusement crinkling the corners of her eyes. “Don’t think I would’ve expected Earth’s lone engineer to listen to ancient musicals.”

Fitz mimicked her crossed arms, but hugged himself tightly as if to deflect the criticism. “Yeah, I mean, they’re not popular up in the _ships_ , but they’re very interesting, really, and they’re quite rare, you know, probably worth more than –”

“Fitz,” she interrupted, “I was just teasing.”

He let his mouth drop open and then snapped it shut. “Oh.”

Simmons shrugged, scuffing her boot on the ground. “In any case, I don’t think anyone should have to apologize for something that makes them happy,” she said, an edge to her voice that made him wonder what of hers she’d had to defend. After a deep breath, she smiled over at him. “And that was quite pretty, anyway. That song.”

“It’s called ‘Dulcinea,’” he stuttered, watching as Wall-E backed up to get a better view of Eve and almost bumped into Simmons.

She just reached out to stop him, and the robot started, rotating his body around to look at her. When Wall-E didn’t move away again, she crouched down to get at eye-level and stared curiously at him. He leaned away at first, but then stretched his disproportionally-thin neck forward to return her scrutiny, eyes lifting and falling as he examined her face.

“Did you give him mods?” 

“What?” 

“There’s a little –” She popped open the tape deck in Wall-E’s chest. The robot flailed his short arms and squeezed the compartment closed, scooting away from her and glancing at the impassive, egg-shaped robot in embarrassment. Simmons smiled. “He has a cassette deck – that’s how he was playing the music. I may not be an engineer, but I’m quite sure those aren’t standard for trash compacting robots.”

Fitz rubbed his neck, miserably hoping that the flush creeping up his neck was hidden by the encroaching darkness. “I... may have tinkered with a few things. Just for him, though. Left the others to do their jobs properly.”

“Is that why he’s so...” She paused, both of them watching Wall-E continue his inept attempts to befriend (or woo) Eve.

“No,” he answered preemptively, shaking his head. “I found him like that.”

“That’s certainly not standard, though, for waste reduction robots.”

Fitz smiled as Eve let out a small giggle at the other robot’s antics. “Not at all. There’s no one else quite like Wall-E.” He glanced up and tilted his head, puzzled by the softness of the look Simmons gave him as he talked about his pet robot.

She cleared her throat and turned away, taking in the returning harshness of the storm winds in the receding twilight. “What’s the name of the musical?”

“The – oh. _Man of La Mancha_. It’s an adaptation of a novel, I think.”

Simmons _hmmm_ ’ed in response, and then glanced down at her stomach. “Maybe we could listen to it over dinner,” she ventured, looking vaguely abashed. “I’m starting to get hungry...”

Fitz slapped his hand lightly to his head and strode back into the antechamber. “Oh, God, yeah, of course. It’s all packaged meals here –”

“Anything sounds wonderful right now, honestly,” she grimaced, “judging by the noises my stomach is making.” 

“It’s not too bad if you just imagine what you’d be eating if you were a sewer rat or something,” he said, waiting for the two robots to follow Simmons into the shelter before pulling the door closed. She caught on to the strangely complex lock system and started mimicking his movements, much to Fitz’s surprise, helping him get the whole thing shut tight in half the usual time.

 _So this is what it’s like to have a partner_ , he thought to himself, an unconscious grin spreading across his face as he watched her sweep her hair back into a ponytail. Fitz ducked his head as she caught him staring and then motioned into the main room. “And we can listen to _Man of La Mancha_ over dinner, s’long as your stomach keeps quiet enough.”

Simmons let out a loud laugh and whacked his shoulder as she followed him, and Fitz couldn’t help but think that if it had been this easy to be around people all those years ago he might never have volunteered to be alone for so long.

Even though their dinner was food that Fitz had eaten hundreds upon hundreds of times, it still managed to be the best meal he could ever remember experiencing. They used metal crates for chairs and a slightly taller wooden box as a table, ate out of worn ceramic bowls using dilapidated metal utensils, and talked and laughed and talked. Sometimes they paused for a particular lyric or melody, but the musical was almost all but forgotten once he’d hit play. The robots flitted around them, communicating with their own little chirps and beeps, and actually seemed to be getting along. At one point, Eve even tried imitating Wall-E’s dancing by thudding heavily against the metal floor, which unfortunately resulted in them having to clean up half their food and heat up a third meal.

Eventually, they made their way to sit on the only comfortable place in the whole room: The lumpy cot on which Fitz normally slept. It was only after they’d been chatting on it for an hour that he realized that this should probably be more awkward than it felt, having a strange woman sitting on his bed barely three hours after meeting her. He cursed his genetics as he felt himself flush at the thought, and Simmons stopped mid-sentence, brows furrowing.

“What’s wrong?” She leaned forward over the pillow she’d been hugging. Normally, that was how Fitz preferred to sit – curled into the corner at the top of his bed, holding his one, lumpy pillow – but when she’d gravitated towards it naturally, it didn’t occur to him to say anything. Somehow, even that one, silly similarity made him like her that much more.

He waved his hand awkwardly in front of his face. “No, nothing, sorry.” Her lips tilted up at the corners as she nodded, and, the thread of conversation gone, they lapsed into comfortable silence. Further down the room, Wall-E twirled in a circle to wrap himself in multi-colored Christmas lights while Eve watched on with bewildered fascination. 

“Did you like it there? On Scotship?” Simmons was staring at him again, in that way she had of making him feel like he was under a microscope while simultaneously being perfectly comfortable with her scrutiny. He shrugged, but before he could form any words on the subject she started up again. “My parents went there for holiday once, and I had exams to finish so I couldn’t go with them, but they said it was very nice, that the hallways were a little colder than they’d like but the drinks were quite good and the people were just lovely.” She seemed to realize that she was rambling and pulled herself to a rapid halt, letting out an awkward chuckle. He wondered if this was her way of making up for mentioning his accent earlier, and suppressed a smile.

“Never been off Scotship myself – until, you know,” he added, waving vaguely in a circle over their heads. “Mum couldn’t swing it, even working double shifts. S’why I volunteered to work down here. Don’t think she liked the idea, me having graduated before most other kids had even started secondary – she thought I wasn’t ready to be on my own. But I insisted.” He trailed off, looking askance at Simmons. She was just studying him quietly, unnervingly, and he wondered if she was just naturally unsettling or if he had really gotten too unused to human company. “Seemed important to do this,” he said, finally. “I’m the best engineer the armada’s got, and the better the robots work, the sooner we’ll find new life and –”

“The sooner we can all come back home,” Simmons finished for him, smiling. 

“To finish the quest,” he quoted before he could stop himself, and he ducked his head at her laugh.

“He’s quite the hero of yours,” she teased, “this Don Quixote.”

Fitz shrugged and picked absently at the hem of his shirt. “I’m not sure about hero, exactly. But I think I understand him, you know? Doing everything he could to prove his worth, even if it cost him...” He trailed off, staring down at the plaid bedspread. Even after all these years, he was pretty sure conversations like this were not the norm for having just met someone.

Something tumbled off a shelf behind Fitz, drawing both of their attentions, and for a moment the whole room froze. In his struggle to disentangle himself from the Christmas lights, Wall-E had knocked over that old, worn boot he’d brought in earlier. Out of the fallen boot peeked something bright green, leafy, and, well, _living_. 

Instantly, Eve’s alarm system began to sound, echoing painfully in the small, metal room and causing both humans to cover their ears with their hands. Eve’s chest cavity opened seamlessly to reveal a hollow chamber designed specifically for samples, and a blue beam of light grabbed hold of the sapling, hovered the plant into the cavity, and then snapped shut. Before either scientist could rush over to inspect the plant Eve completely shut down, eyes disappearing from her facial screen and arms snapping against her body module. All that was left to indicate her status was a round, blinking, green decal with the outline of a plant.

With the disconcerting alarm no longer sounding, Simmons rushed over to her robot, looking for seams and muttering “No, no, _no_ –”

“It’s no good, Simmons,” Fitz offered, gingerly removing his hands from his ears. “She won’t open up again until she’s back at command. Armada protocol dictates that –” 

“Oh, I _know_ protocol. I just –” She groaned, sweeping loose hair out of her face and glaring at her robot. “I would have really liked to examine the first new plant life on Earth. That would’ve been...”

“Life changing?”

She sighed and smiled over at him, kneeling down to clean up (and, presumably, inspect) the dirt that had fallen out of the boot along with the sapling. “Yes. Life changing.” 

Wall-E, meanwhile, had been watching these proceedings with an increasing expression of panic and horror, and when Simmons moved away from Eve he sped over to the other robot and began fussing at her, even trying (partially successfully) to pry an arm away from her body.

“No, no, mate,” Fitz rushed over and separated Wall-E’s hand from Eve’s, letting her arm click back into place. Wall-E began making agitated beeps and clicks, eyes wide and staring up at Fitz, who slowly moved his hands downwards, visually indicating calm. “She’s fine, that’s supposed to happen. It’s her directive.”

“Diiii-rec-tiiiiive?” The robot labored to get the word out, but considering that Fitz had never heard him speak a word before today, it still seemed fairly impressive.

“Yeah, directive. Alright?”

Wall-E tilted his eyes quickly up and down, a nervous tick that Fitz had only ever seen before when they’d almost destroyed their first _Hello Dolly!_ VHS tape, then gave a quiet, electronic trill. He gently pushed Eve over to the space at the end of the bed, tied the string of Christmas lights around her like a leash, and hunkered down with the other end of it. 

“That might be the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen,” Simmons murmured, as they both watched Wall-E lower his eyes until they were just above the level of his chest so he could keep watch over Eve.

Fitz shifted his gaze to Simmons, who wore this deep, quiet sort of longing on her face so plainly that he wondered how he’d missed it before, and thought that maybe, just maybe, she’d felt as lonely up on the ships as he did here on Earth. She caught his eye then and switched to a quick smile, holding up a small plastic bin she’d found on the shelf immediately behind her.

“Would you mind terribly if I kept this? For the –”

“No, course not.”

She began carefully transferring the boot and the leftover dirt to the bin, silence taking over as they both sifted through their own thoughts about what had just happened.  

“I can’t believe that the first new life on Earth in almost a millennia was sitting in a bloody boot on one of my shelves,” Fitz muttered, newly horrified by the very real possibility that Wall-E would never have shown him his this particular treasure and the plant would have shriveled and died, its existence and potential never to be realized.

Simmons giggled and returned to the bed, placing the evidence bin gently on the floor. “Seems almost more appropriate, really. How anticlimactic would it be otherwise?” Fitz chuckled and stared down at his hands, rubbing absently at the almost-permanent streaks of dirt coating his skin. “Do you ever think about what Earth will look like when it’s healthy again?” Simmons’ voice was almost a whisper, gaze unfocused somewhere between them. “I mean, I’ve seen the videos, and there’s the ship parks, but... none of that seems quite real enough, you know?” Her eyes searched his face for any kind of recognition or understanding. “It all seems so flat – how could that fill up an entire planet? To have trees just covering the whole sky above you...”

Fitz swallowed and nodded emphatically. “I think about it all the time. Sometimes, when it isn’t storm season, I walk around the old city ruins and try to imagine what it would be like if I was surrounded by trees instead of metal scraps...” He slid off the bed to retrieve a book and then returned, scooting close enough that she could look over his shoulder. The book was filled with brightly colored nature photography from eons ago, and focused on a particular species of animal native to jungles and forests. “I’ve always wanted to see a monkey,” Fitz whispered, gently turning the fragile pages. “In the wild, I mean – I’ve been to the Scotship zoo. But their cages are so small. What would it be like to see them swinging through the trees? Just – free, in the open air.”

They reached his favorite picture, a black and white-furred monkey hanging from a branch, and he turned to look at Simmons. He froze when he realized that his face was mere inches from hers, close enough that he could almost feel the warmth radiating off her skin. His mind flashed to dozens of scenes just like this one, from the VHS tapes he’d collected or books he’d pieced together, and whipped his head back around just as Simmons turned to face him. Without thinking he snapped the book closed and leapt up, dropping it on a shelf and willing his pulse to slow down. If they had been anywhere else, or anyone else, or even if he’d known her for more than four hours, he would have kissed her, he was sure of it, and for some reason that thought terrified him. 

Through the beating of his pulse in his ears, he heard Simmons stifle a yawn behind him. When he turned, she waved a hand in front of her face as if to shoo away the exhaustion, and he grinned. “Bedtime, I think.” She smiled gratefully and watched him yank his winter comforter off of the top shelf, her eyes narrowing as he dropped the blanket on the floor and laid on top of it.

“What are you doing?” Her voice was clipped, and he turned up to her, perplexed.

“Going to bed?”

“This is your bed.”

“Well, yeah, but tonight it’s _your_ bed.”

Simmons stood sharply up and straightened her blouse. “No, I’m not going to take the only bed, I’m already intruding more than enough –”

“I don’t mind, honestly –”

“I’d feel terrible –”

“The floor isn’t much less comfortable than that blasted mattress, anyway.” She laughed in spite of herself, and he leaned up on one elbow, scratching at the back of his neck. “Please, I’d be embarrassed to make you sleep on the floor. I’m already mortified enough by the state of this place – I’ve been imagining what my mum would say about cleaning all evening. Take the bed. I’ll sleep better.” 

There was a pause where she stared down at him, clearly wanting to argue. Eventually, she sighed, and sat back on the bed, toeing off her socks. “I feel like I’ve exiled you to the floor.”

“Better than exiling me to another planet,” he said lightly, but her eyes softened.

“All anyone ever says about you is that you’re absolutely brilliant, you know.” He felt his cheeks flush and laid back down as she continued. “I don’t know why they haven’t called you back to head the engineering division.” 

Fitz shrugged, keeping his eyes trained on the ceiling. “No one else wants to bother with being down here, I think.”

“But you don’t mind?”

“Not much to compare it to, back on the ship. I didn’t have... I was always something of a loner. Difficult to make friends when...” In his peripheral vision, he could see Simmons nodding emphatically, so he turned to look up at her. She leaned slightly over the edge of the bed, a bundle of sheets bunched in the hand she was using to prop up her chin.

“It’s a shame, Fitz.”

“I got along fine –”

“No, not that – I was going to say, it’s a shame that we were on different ships. It seems like we would have gotten on rather well, you and I.” 

Somewhere behind him, the water heater turned over with a sluggish thud, but he didn’t move his gaze from Simmons’ face. He thought, then, that maybe he’d been studying her in the same way she’d been studying him all evening, both trying to figure out something that probably didn’t have a quantifiable answer. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I think we would’ve.” They smiled at each other, and he reached over to flip the switch to his bedside lamp, dropping the room into darkness – except for the Christmas lights still strung around Eve and held by Wall-E.

“Goodnight, Fitz.”

“Night.” 

After a few minutes, when his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he saw her hand drop over the side of the bed, hanging down less than two feet from where he lay, and he had the vague urge to grab onto it – just like two characters in an old Earth classic he’d read as a child. The feeling passed almost as quickly as it had come and he gave his head a quick shake. One lesson he was learning is that spending one’s days listening to idealistic musicals was a rather poor way to learn about human interactions. Fitz knew that people didn’t behave that way, really – he was too smart not to know – but his brain couldn’t quite shake those patterns from his head.

He stared up at the ceiling, the brown now mottled in a rainbow glow from the string of lights, and remembered that Simmons and Eve would be leaving at sunrise. Assuming that the storm was finished, of course – but since he didn’t hear anything shaking against the side of the bunker, he thought it was likely that the winds had long since died down. The next time he would be called up to the armada was another six months from now, and, although he knew she was from Engship, he had no idea how to find Simmons again. Or why he had this certainty that find her, he must.

Today suddenly seemed like a watershed moment – this brilliant source of light and understanding and a humanity he’d never really experienced with anyone else had soared into his life, and in a few hours it would be gone again. He rejected the voice at the back of the head saying that he’d just watched too many terrible musicals. Today hadn’t been a meet-cute, it wasn’t some sort of call for a duet or any of those other things that happened in his and Wall-E’s precious VHS tapes. Simmons was genuinely different from any of the other humans he’d ever met, and the idea of not being given more time to puzzle her out was making him lonely in a way he hadn’t felt since he’d been a teenager. 

But his job and his life were here – what if the plant Eve confiscated was a fluke of some kind? Their entire species needed him to keep the robot fleet working and hunting and fixing. Sane humans didn’t go chasing after people they’d only just met. Even Don Quixote kept after the windmills when Aldonza told him not to. Fitz exhaled and turned onto his side, facing the shelves. It made far more sense for him to stay down here, on Earth.

Fitz awoke to the sound of a metal tin crashing onto the floor, sometime about six hours after they’d turned off the light and about four hours after he’d actually fallen asleep. Simmons stood stock still just beyond his feet, cringing as he shot upwards and tumbled slightly sideways. After she made half a dozen very English apologies, he finally waved her off and she went back to opening their breakfast. It was a quieter meal than the previous night’s; Fitz couldn’t speak for Simmons, who kept eyeing the unmoved robot tableau, but he was anxiously awaiting the radio static that would call his new friends away again.

While Simmons was cleaning up in the bathroom, Wall-E finally stretched his head up, his movements sluggish as he started rolling towards the entrance – dragging Eve behind him like a strange, oval balloon. Fitz hopped up, stretched, and followed after the robots to open the door to the antechamber. “Hey, Simmons,” he called, “I need to let Wall-E out for recharging, back in a mo’.”

Wall-E waited patiently in the antechamber while Fitz pulled on his orange suit, but he was stopped before he could screw on his helmet by sounds coming from inside the shelter: A loud bang, muttered swearing, and then rapid footsteps. Simmons sped into the antechamber and let out a breath when she saw that the outer door was still sealed. Fitz had explained the night before that he’d had to turn off the outer shield and they would therefore need their suits to go outside this morning, so he wasn’t sure why she’d looked so panicked. 

“Everything alright?”

She gave him a blindingly bright smile and, just as he was wondering how she looked so pretty in a wrinkled pink blouse and spaceship standard trousers, strode purposefully over to him. Unsure of her intent, Fitz stood still as she leaned up and pressed a firm kiss to his left cheek. 

As she stepped back, she chuckled, folding her hands in front of her. “I just – wanted to say thank you. Before we were both in the suits. Thank you for being so nice, and for letting me intrude.” 

He shook his head emphatically, the skin touched by her lips tingling with electricity. “Not at all, no need to thank me. S’what anyone would’ve done.”

Simmons nodded, still smiling, and reached for her own suit. Fitz couldn’t be sure, because she’d turned her back to him to step into the clumsy outfit, but he thought he saw her ears flush. “I just heard from command, actually, and they’re ready to pick me up if the sky’s clear.”

Helmet screwed onto the suit, she trotted to the other side of the outer door, and for one, mad moment, Fitz hoped that when they finished undoing the locks it would be viciously windy. Of course, when he pushed the door open the sky was actually the clearest it had been in months, only a light layer of brown obscuring the sun as opposed to the normal muddy haze – and absolutely no wind.

Wall-E rolled right past them with Eve in tow and, perched at the edge of the shelter’s walkway, unfolded his solar panels, letting out a small, electronic sigh as the sun did its work. Having set her helmet to be clear instead of the opaque tint it had been yesterday, Simmons stared out at the desolate landscape, squinting in the direction of the ruined skyscrapers in the distance. “Wow. This is... what a view to have every day.” Fitz frowned inside his own helmet, unsure if her comment was meant positively or not. She gave him a brief smile, and then strode towards the spaceped. “Well, I hope you won’t miss it too much.”

He blinked. “Miss what?”

“Your little – well, rather large, really – oasis,” she called back. “Earth.” After righting the machine, she turned it on, letting the motors warm up. It was a sleek, white thing made out of the same material as Eve, and it stood out starkly against the muted backdrop of Earth’s wasteland. 

“And where do you think I’m going?” 

Simmons flashed him an exasperated look as she passed by on her way to Eve. “You’re coming back to the armada with me, of course.”

Fitz watched her unhook the Christmas lights, which turned off once they were no longer touching Eve, and gently pushed Eve towards the spaceped. This got Wall-E’s attention, but with his power light still only halfway lit the most he could do was make angry beeps and clicks at Simmons’ retreating back.

“They haven’t called me back,” he countered. “And they’d have to send someone to return me after –” 

“Command didn’t mind the idea of you coming to the debrief,” Simmons interrupted calmly, snapping Eve into a hollow clearly designed for this purpose. “Of course, you can say no – they aren’t your direct superiors.” She turned around and set one of her penetrating gazes on him. “But don’t you want to come with me?” There was a pause where Fitz could feel his neck redden under the blissful cover of the suit, and then Simmons flushed pink all at once. “I mean, not with me, _me_ , but back up to the ships – to the rest of humanity. Not that there’s anything wrong with coming with me, that’s sort of the point, but that’s... yes, you’ve got it, I’ll just...”

Simmons squeezed her eyes closed and Fitz saw her mouthing numbers to herself as a sort of calming exercise. “I do want to go with you,” he blurted out, causing her eyes to snap back open in the middle of the number seven. “But what about...” He gestured out at the trash heaps where his robot fleet was already back to work. 

“They’ll be fine without you for a bit,” she replied softly. “Now, we have to go. Get Wall-E.”

Still somewhat stupefied by the idea that she wanted him to fly with her up to the stars, Fitz obeyed her automatically, lifting up the surprisingly light robot with ease. Wall-E made an excited trill in his arms and Fitz couldn’t help but grin. “You’re so transparent,” he muttered, strapping Wall-E to the machine with Simmons’ help.

“I’ve told them your suit is faulty, so they’re going to come further down in the cloud layer to pick us up. Just hold tight to me,” she instructed, swinging one leg over the middle of the shuttle contraption. 

Fitz, however, froze, suddenly hyperaware of everything that could go wrong, both on this shuttle and then up in the ship, or even down here on Earth when he wasn’t around to take care of the robots. More than that, though, he had the more-than-small suspicion that if he followed Simmons up to the armada, he wasn’t going to want to come back to Earth, to be alone anymore – to be without her. It was stupid and naïve and yet... he couldn’t stop himself from thinking it.

Simmons was watching him patiently, and smiled when he looked up at her. “Everything’s going to be fine, Fitz,” she said, reaching a gloved hand out to him. Something loosened in his chest when her eyes met his, and, suddenly, he knew that she was absolutely right. Fitz grabbed her hand and hoisted himself up behind her on the spaceped, holding Simmons tightly around the middle as she kicked off the brakes and they lifted straight into the air, puffs of dust swirling across the ground in their wake. No matter what was out there, Fitz decided, it would be better if he could figure it out right beside Simmons.

 

\------

 

Enormous redwood trees towered over the ground for as far as the eye could see, a thin, nearly invisible path twisting within the trunks. Fitz stared up at them, craning his neck as far back as it would go to peer up at the very uppermost branches, marveling at the way the sunlight arced through the leaves. Five years had passed since his very first conversation with Jemma, when they had both wondered what forests would look like outside of a spaceship, and now they were so very close to finding out. The image on the four-story-high glass wall flickered and buzzed out, and a sharp English voice swore behind him.

“Shite, Leo, I’m so sorry –”

He turned to see Jemma holding an unplugged cable and grimacing. Fitz just laughed and shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, I should be watching the work anyway, not my fantasy.” She smirked and dropped the cable, raising an eyebrow as she continued towards him. 

“I thought that was me,” she murmured, lips brushing against his ear and then coming to rest firmly on his cheek. 

Giving her a small huff, he crossed his arms. “I should’ve stuck with the inanimate objects,” he grumbled, wondering if any of their coworkers had overheard, and turned to look out the window wall.

They were standing in the armada’s brand new Earth Base, built as a testing site for vegetation growth and, perhaps in the future, animal acclimatization. Parts of it were still under construction, but the residences and main building were functional. The building-high windows looked out over the first fields of the resettlement, where robots were carefully tending to just-sprouted saplings – just like the one Wall-E had found growing in a boot all that time ago. Down the last line of sprouts came Wall-E, carefully holding a watering can and admiring the work of his more finessed (and more boring) comrades. As he got to the end, he looked up and waved at Fitz through the glass, probably chirping something at him. Eve zoomed over the rows of plant beds and held her hand out to Wall-E. The engineer smiled and waved back at his idiosyncratic little robot, his first ever friend and probably the reason he was here at all.

Jemma tsked and rolled her eyes at Fitz’s semi-permanent state of prickliness. “ _You_ followed me into space, Leopold,” she teased, looping her arm through his while she tapped at a tablet. “You’re stuck with me.”

Fitz laughed and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, turning her to face him. “And you followed me right back to Earth. So what does that make us?” 

She finished with her device and grinned up at Fitz, brushing a thumb along his jaw. “Even.” 

Just as he leaned down, eyes focused on her lips, he heard the faint strains of a familiar song playing somewhere above them. They both turned to see Eve holding both of Wall-E’s hands on the other side of the windows, flying them halfway up the building, the play button pressed on his cassette deck.

“ _And the world shall know thy glory, Dulcinea..._ ”

Both scientists burst into laughter, holding onto each other for support as they watched Eve fly herself and Wall-E away again. When they’d caught their breaths, Fitz traced his fingers along Jemma’s collarbone and around to the back of her neck, unable to take his eyes away from hers, as she continued to study him like she had that first night on Earth, back in his bunker. “Stuck with you, though,” he whispered. “I think I could do that.” Then he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers, reveling in the now-familiar feeling of her mouth as it moved with his, of her fingers pressing into his arm, of her simply being there with him. In that moment, Fitz had never been so glad that his own knight on a white steed had come to rescue him from tilting at windmills, and even more so that her name had been Jemma Simmons.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone feels like drawing me Fitz & Wall-E hanging out together, I'll love you forever.
> 
> Initial idea inspired by a gifset made by tumblr user laangol, who used Wall-E as a general robot. I couldn't resist dropping FitzSimmons straight into the movie itself.
> 
> An accompanying AU gifset for this fic can be found [here](http://agentverbivore.tumblr.com/post/113097189837/fitzsimmons-wall-e-au-ao3-leo-fitz-is-the-last)!


End file.
